Recently one of our Arts for Brain Health groups took a field trip!
10 people from the Monday Creative group visited Cartwright Hall Art Gallery in Bradford with facilitators, Ailsa Lewer and Carine Brosse. The Monday group welcomes participants who are affected by dementia and their carers.
We hired a minibus from Keighley Community Transport to take the group there and picked participants up along the way.
The group spent over an hour in the main gallery where people had an opportunity to look around and then we sat round two paintings. We talked about the paintings, discussing the artists and what people thought about the paintings. We also talked about the connections between the subject matter of the two paintings as both are about textile making – the Lowry showing a smoky. industrial landscape of textile mills in Manchester compared to the peaceful, domestic scene in “The Arab Weaver”.
Studying a Lowry
Studying The Arab Weaver
Many thanks to staff at Cartwright Hall from Bradford Museums who made the visit possible – helping us with access to the disabled entrance, providing chairs and making refreshments.
We look forward to further visits to Bradford Museums.
If you are any to find out more about our Arts for Brain Health project and the Monday Creatuve group, please visit our website.
Calling all Keighley Makers!!! Apply for a stall at our upcoming event.
We are now taking applications for local creatives who would like a stall at our upcoming Summer Maker Fayre and Open Studios on Saturday 17th August 2024.
We would like applications from makers based in and around Keighley who would like to sell their creations at our upcoming event. Be it jewellery, ceramics, paintings, gifts, woodwork or something else, please get in touch.
Deadline for applications is Friday 26th July 2024.
DEADLINE EXTENDED! Call-out for Keighley artists! Would you like to provide creative content for our Engineering and Arts Explorations project?
A new project has recently been launched in Keighley. Local engineer and STEM Ambassador, Alisha Bell, supported by The Leap organisations is on the hunt for local artists to engage the next generation of engineers.
Alisha is a passionate young female engineer at the heart of local manufacturing having worked for Teconnex for over 5 years and now working for Byworth Boilers.
With this project she is seeking creative contributions from artists, asking them to reimagine the images behind engineering and helping to celebrate Keighley’s manufacturing industry.
Therefore we are asking local artists to submit their ideas for artwork. The artwork should be designed to engage the local community with engineering and helping people see the manufacturing industry from a new perspective. The target audience is specifically the younger generation and women.
We are asking for artists ideally in and around Keighley to apply by doing a quick annotated sketch of their ideas and emailing it to alisha.bell@live.co.uk before 1st July 2024. 7th July 2024.
The team will then choose up to 10 artists who will be commissioned to turn their ideas into a final piece of artwork at A2 size that will be put on public display. This is an exciting and PAID opportunity and each successful application will be commissioned £50.
All successful entries will be displayed at our Engineering and Arts Exploration event at Keighley Creative on Cooke Lane on Saturday 24th August 2024, 10am till 4pm. Also the chosen pieces may be exhibited again publicly after this event in other settings but you will be informed and asked about this prior to other exhibitions.
The preference will be for the chosen artists and engineering to be associated with Keighley.
This project is being supported by The Leap in partnership with Keighley Creative, Arts Council England, Bradford Council and Creative Place Partners.
Deadline for applications is 7th July 2024. Please apply by emailing a sketch of your ideas directly to Alisha Bell at alisha.bell@live.co.uk
This weekend a big community event was held on Church Green in Keighley.
The Eid on the Green event featured a host of activities including an arts and crafts stall hosted by our fab team as well as soft archery, rodeo football and face painting.
There were also stalls by Keighley Lions and Pawperfection Rehoming and housing association, Incommunities, ran a competition for the best henna designs.
An amazing performance was put on by local musicians and dancers Punjabi Roots and Cecil Green Arts held a circus workshop and show.
Thank you to Keighley Town Council for organising and hosting the event which took place on the Church Green car park on Saturday 22nd June 2024.
For information on Keighley Creative hosting an arts and craft workshop at your next event, please email admin@keighleycreative.org
Tuesday night was the Bradford Visual Arts Social run by Bradford Producing Hub. This time it was held at Keighley Creative and what an honour it was!
The event was a great success with lots of positive feedback. Attendees came from across the district to meet other artists, social, network and hear more about opportunities for creatives in our local area.
The focus of the event was on local and national support organisations for visual artists and they explained more about what they do and how they can help. The organisations included ourselves, Bradford Producing Hub, Yorkshire and Humber Visual Arts Network, Axis Web, Curator Space and Keighley Photo Hub.
We shared wonderful food together courtesy of Caterpillar Catering alongside taking part in some creative activities run by one of our studio artists, Carole Griffiths. Attendees got a tour of our building, seeing our artist studios and enjoying the comfort of the fabulous Stockroom Cinema.
We can’t wait to host our next social event for local creatives. Watch this space for more info!
Keighley Creative I Am Brill Disco. Photo: Bob Smith Photography
Last Friday was the I Am Brill disco, a free family event organised by us and held at Victoria Hall in Keighley.
The event welcomed 100s of local families and the aim was to encourage Keighley kids to come together and celebrate their brilliance. The I Am Brill disco was the culmination of numerous creative workshops that we have held around town over the previous few months, where local children were encouraged to make their own unique creations.
A red carpet welcome at I Am Brill Disco. Photo: Bob Smith Photography
The I Am Brill project has been inspired by the work of local artist, Letty McHugh, and her piece “Let Brilliant Talents Shine Forth”, which is currently installed on the front of the library and recognises the important history of the Keighley’s original Mechanics Institute.
Letty McHugh’s art installation, “Let Brilliant Talents Shine Forth”.
The disco was thoroughly enjoyed by attendees who described it as “excellent” “energetic” and “inclusive” as the event was designed to welcome everyone, whatever their age, ethnicity or if they are neurodiverse.
Children made “disco sticks” for I Am Brill Disco. Photo: Bob Smith Photography
Party-goers were greeted on arrival with snowfall, balloons and a red carpet and then spent the evening dancing, crafting, drawing, fishing and limboing.
Limboing at I Am Brill Disco. Photo: Bob Smith Photography
Children were eligible to win prizes for their achievements which included unique I Am Brill T-shirts and posters and sweets donated by ASDA. Performers included drummers, Punjabi Roots, stilt-walkers, Chicks on Sticks, DJs, and local dancers from Unique Cheer and Dance.
Unique Cheer and Dance at I Am Brill Disco. Photo: Bob Smith Photography
Our team used the work of Dr Seuss to inspire the decorations around Victoria Hall and “Seussian” themed snacks were provided by Caterpillar Catering.
Dr Seuss themed snacks from Caterpillar Catering. Photo: Bob Smith Photography
The event was manned by our team alongside lots of enthusiastic volunteers, who provided their time for free. The event was funded by Bradford Council, the Leap, Levelling Up Fund and Toy Lab.
Event Director, Aimee Grundell, said:
“The I Am Brill disco was everything we hoped it would be: fun, inspiring and celebratory. It created an opportunity for local children and families to feel confident, get creative, and recognise that they are brilliant!”
Boy with balloon at I Am Brill Disco. Photo: Bob Smith Photography
The feedback received was overwhelmingly positive with one attendee saying:
“Thank you for such an amazing disco. My seven year old and I loved it! It was such a great way to spend a miserable Friday night in January. You could see so much hard work went into it! As a single parent to two, and a mature student it was nice to be able to do something that good locally that was free also. Thank you :)”
Girl enjoying I Am Brill Disco. Photo: Bob Smith Photography
For more information on our upcoming events and projects, please sign up to our mailing list and follow us on social media.
On Tuesday 16th January, Keighley Creative will be hosting the latest Visual Arts Social, organised by Bradford Producing Hub. This regular event welcomes artists from across Bradford and Keighley and this time is being held in our Cooke Street premises.
Each social includes an activity led by a professional artist and this time sees the turn of our studio holder, Carole Griffiths, with her workshop ‘Rip and Tear – Smudge and Draw’.
Carole is a practicing sculptor and has been an art educator for 25 years. She studied sculpture at Wimbledon School of Art and received her MA through Leeds Metropolitan University.
Her art has been shown at a number of locations in the United Kingdom, including Canterbury, London, Bradford, Halifax, Leeds, Sheffield, Derby, and York. She is a member of the Yorkshire Sculptors Group, which promotes work through exhibitions addressing contemporary themes. Carole has a Ph.D in the Visual Arts at Coventry University, on Sculptural Reconfigurations of the Kitchen Utensil: A Poetic Chaos of Domesticity. Her work depicts an open dialogue of object displacement and its uses, which feeds autobiographical depictions of her own domestic circumstances and echoes through narratives and introspective descriptions of production. The observed domestic object sculptures emphasise the pleasures of making through a poetic reflection of both the method and the content, allowing the observer to perceive and depict the peculiar and intricate relationship between things, subjects, and words.
For more information or to book a place at the Visual Arts Social, please visit the Bradford Producing Hub website:
Over at Keighley Creative we’re helping to support Keighley Association Women and Children’s Centre (KAWACC) with their new grant-giving project called Fusion, funded by The Leap.
What is it about?
Keighley residents and community organisations can access grants of up to £1000 to realise their creative, community-led ideas. These grants will prioritise people and organisations that have been unfunded, or under-funded in the past- and that highlight new creative outlooks in Keighley. To find out more, please email Irum at iram@kawacc.org.uk
Many of you may remember that back in 2021 we heard of our success in securing £2.6 million to buy and renovate an existing town-centre building so we have a permanent home in Keighley. This has been made possible through Keighley Towns Fund https://www.ourtownkeighley.co.uk/
This funding makes it possible to create an accessible and exciting Hub focussed on how we live, work and play through arts and culture, designed with, by and for our local communities.
If you would like to read more about how our future hub and festival will benefit Keighley, here you go, free to download:
We’ve just added the K-Town Shopper Video to our Youtube channel! Many thanks to filmmaker Danny Hardaker for this fantastic piece of work, it’s a great memory of a fantastic weekend.
